Human Rights are known as the legitimate rights we all are
born with. Those Rights are the privileges we have for being members of the
human kind. As the simplest definition to language, we can consider it as an
indispensable tool to our relations with others. Even if in linguistic we learn
in reference to the innateness hypothesis, that linguistic knowledge exists in
humans at birth, however it is not given to all the gift of being a charismatic
person. In law and Human Rights class, we also learn that even if today many
organizations struggle to implement these Rights, there is still a huge gap
between the theory and the reality. In this
blog, I will show how language can reinforce someone’s Rights and how it can be
used to do the opposite as well: deprive a person from it Human rights. I will also
demonstrate how Martin Luther King’s struggle used the language of Human Rights
for the recognition of Black people’s rights in the United States with the
Civil Rights Movement.
We live in a society where all nations, from different
cultural background and religious beliefs interact with each other every day.
We are called to be tolerant and respect everyone’s opinion, beliefs and
customs. However no one can use its freedom of expression to harm someone
else’s integrity, whereby the “no harm
principle”. When judging a person for it acts or behavior we must take into
account its culture, since we know that every culture has its own norms and
practices. Nevertheless no one should base the action of take away someone’s
life on the purpose of religion. Cultural relativism is respected by law
because culture it part of our identity, but it cannot be used to deprive
others from any of their rights. However this remains an issue for the Human
Rights organizations, it is not easy to fulfill this task everywhere on the
planet.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights ratified after
World War II is the recognition of the right of speech and right to social
security, the right to education, shelter, health care, our Rights as workers…
of all human being on hearth. This document stipules in the first of its thirty
articles, that everyone is born free and equal. Martin Luther King used the
language of economy to implement the Rights of black citizens to equal
opportunities. He appealed to the conscience of those who had the economic
power to reduce poverty and let his people access a minimum wage to response to
their obligations. When King used the expression “starvation wages”, he reinforced
their rights as workers, advocating they deserved to be compensated for the
effort they produced. By accessing a
minimum standard of life people can choose the life they value.
Linguistic determinism lets us understand that language determines
thoughts. Yet, when referring to the Language of Human Rights we don’t always
think of our personal wellbeing, we talk in term of justice and equality for
everyone. It is the ideal of those who wrote and signed the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights to live and govern in a word where everyone’s right
would be equally respected. This is why we always choose our words with
precaution in our relations with others, since anyone would like to be accused
of violation of Human Rights. The Language of Human Rights helps us to keep the
balance between what it is fair to do say, how to present the final decisions
when resolving legal or civil issues and to analyze and judge what it is
arbitrary done to people. However, even if the Language of Human Rights is
powerful and indispensable in relations with others, it is limited. These
limits come into the Language of Human rights when we use our judicial activism
to react toward a situation, because we are all human beings. The human kind cannot
be totally radical, because diversity, similarity and particularity are what influence
our judicial restraint when we talk about Human Rights.
